User:Sanne vn/sandbox

Orleana Hawks was a mountain midwife in Patrick and Carroll County, Virginia. She helped deliver more than 1,000 babies, in which she never lost mother or child. In 2012, she was honored in the Virginia Women in History program.

Life
Orleana served as a midwife from 1889 until 1938, a year before she died. She started being a midwife after she herself had lost 24 children. Reasons for these deaths are unclear, some say she or her husband murdered them, but a more likely reason is that she had a disease what infected the baby, like Rh hemolytic disease. Most of her children were stillborn, and if they did live, they only survived for a few days. Even though she was unable to have children, or maybe because of that, she decided to assist her neighbors in Carroll County during childbirth. She was almost 50 years old when she started her “practice”, on a completely voluntarily basis. It is said she helped deliver over a thousand babies and that none of them or their mothers died. But since there are no records of this, it is hard to tell if this is true. The last delivery she assisted was that of Maxwell Hawks, on August 30, 1938.

Name
Since Orleana herself was illiterate, it is not certain that this is the correct way of spelling her first name. In 1913, when she applied for a pension because her husband had served in the Confederate Army, the notary filled in Orleana. Some of the different names are Orlean, Orlena, Aulina or even Pauline.

Legacy
The Orelena Hawks Puckett Institute in Asheville, North Carolina, continues in her legacy to care for mother and child. They promote and try to strengthen the development of child, parent and family.